Privacy

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Being followed around the internet is a strange business when you stop and think about it, and a little unsettling. We would rather not do it to our neighbours. So there is no advertising, no tracking that follows you from page to page or site to site, and no banner asking you to accept any of it.

We do look at which pages get read, and we think you would want us to. We use Plausible, a privacy-focused analytics service, to see this. It sets no cookies, builds no profile of you, and cannot identify you individually. Like our own server logs (below), we look at the pages, not at you. Knowing that forty people read the page about drainage last month and almost nobody found the one about twittens tells us where to put the effort. It tells us nothing about who you are.

The rest of this page is the detail. In short: we hold the minimum we need to run the Association and keep in touch with members, we do not sell it, and you can ask us what we hold whenever you like.

What we collect

When you join or renew, we hold your name, address, the road group you are in, and whichever contact details you have given us. We need these to send you notices, to administer the charge for your road, and to know which residents a given message applies to.

When you contact us, we keep the correspondence for as long as it is useful, so that whoever picks the matter up next can see what has already been said.

When you visit this website, our web server keeps a log of requests, as every web server on earth does. Each line records the page asked for, the date and time, your IP address, the browser you used, and the page you came from if there was one.

We read it to see which pages are useful, to find broken links, and to keep the site secure. Nobody sits and follows a single visitor through it, and the practical truth is that we could not tell you apart from your neighbour if we tried.

The logs are deleted after fourteen days. Before they go we take a summary of the popular pages and the sites that linked to us. That summary holds no IP addresses and cannot be traced to anyone, and we keep it so we can compare one year with the next.

We also use Plausible, a privacy-focused analytics company based in the EU, to see the same kind of thing: which pages are read, and roughly where from. It works without cookies and without building a profile of individual visitors, so it tells us the same as the server logs above, nothing about who you are.

Why we hold it

To send you Association notices, newsletters and AGM papers. To administer road and estate charges. To let your Road Representative contact residents of their own road. And to keep proper records of decisions, as any association holding land is obliged to do.

We only send you things relevant to the Association and the estate.

Our lawful basis

The law asks us to say why we are allowed to use your details. For writing to you about the Association and the estate, our basis is legitimate interests. In plain terms, a residents’ association writing to its residents about the place they live is something people expect, and we think it is fair to do so. We have weighed that against your privacy and kept to the minimum: your name, address, road group and contact details, used for Association business and nothing else.

This is not consent, so there is no tick box to withdraw. Instead, you have the right to object, and we make it easy. Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link. Using it stops our emails to that address. You can also object by writing to the Secretary, without ever having received an email from us. See contact us.

Stopping our emails does not remove you from the Association’s records, and it does not stop notices we are required to send you on paper or by other means.

Who sees it

Committee members and Road Representatives, so far as they need it for their role. A Road Representative sees their own road, not the whole estate.

The Association’s managing agents, who handle estate management, invoicing and formal notices on our behalf.

Resend, the email-sending service we use to deliver Association emails to members. It handles your email address and the message while it sends it, and uses servers in the EU. It does not use your details for anything of its own.

Plausible, for the anonymous page-view analytics described above. It never receives your name, address or any personal detail, only that a page was read.

We do not sell or trade your information, and beyond what is set out on this page, we do not pass it to anyone else without a legal obligation to do so.

When you write to your Road Representative

The form on the contact page asks for your road, topic, name, contact details and message. It stores your message on the Association’s server and emails your Road Representative a private link to read it. The message itself is not in the email. For East Close, which has no Representative at present, the Secretary receives the link instead.

We record when the link is opened and when the message is marked as picked up, so we can spot a message that may have been missed. The website administrator receives a delivery record with the road and topic, but without the message or the Representative’s private link. The administrator’s own private link allows them to read the message and check whether it was opened or picked up, without changing the Representative’s read record. Messages are kept for up to 12 months, then deleted.

To keep automated spam out, the form may use Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a person is sending it. Your browser exchanges technical information with Cloudflare to do this, such as your IP address and browser details. Turnstile does not set advertising or tracking cookies, and Cloudflare does not see what you write in the form.

You can still contact the Secretary by email or post using the details on the contact page.

Committee document discussions

Current committee and board members can discuss private papers in the members’ area. Access uses the email address and committee role on our contact list.

Comments and replies keep the contributor’s name, registered email, date and document version. Other committee members can read the discussion. Ian receives an email notice with a protected link and can mark each contribution as read. The email does not contain the comment text or a copy of the document.

The discussion and saved document versions are retained as the Association’s review record, including when a paper is archived or its author leaves the committee. Signing out does not delete contributions. To correct a contribution, add a reply so the original context remains available. Contact the Secretary about requests concerning this record.

How long we keep it

For as long as you are a member, and after that for as long as we have a genuine reason, such as an unresolved matter affecting the property or a legal record we must retain.

Your rights

You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it where we have no continuing reason to keep it, and object to how we are using it.

Ask by writing to the Secretary. See contact us. If you only want us to stop emailing you, the unsubscribe link in any of our emails does that straight away.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a request, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.